


énouement

by deplore



Category: Free!
Genre: Gen, M/M, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-26
Updated: 2013-08-26
Packaged: 2017-12-24 17:17:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/942518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deplore/pseuds/deplore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thinking about Rin as he was when they were twelve, Haruka remembers something he hadn't realized that he'd forgotten.</p>
<p>For the prompt: "Let's say that Rin came across some sort of magical device and somehow transformed back into the cute, happy shota he used to be for 24 hours. And Haru comes across him in that state. Rin doesn't seem to notice that Haru has aged and treats him pretty much like he did when they were kids. After the initial "wtf is going on" of the situation, Haru decides to stick around until he transforms back. I'm looking for something fluffy but kind of bittersweet too. I'm sure Haru misses the way Rin used to be."</p>
            </blockquote>





	énouement

When Haruka wakes up in the morning, he finds Rin right in front of him. “Haru?” he asks, eyes wide.

Haruka blinks a few times, sits up, and rubs his eyes, but after all that, Rin is still there. And Rin, he realizes, is _young_ \-- he looks just like he did five years ago, when they were in the sixth grade. “Rin,” he replies evenly.

“It is you!” Rin says, face lighting up. “I thought so. Even though you’re way bigger than you’re supposed to be.”

He stares blankly. “No, you’re smaller than you’re supposed to be,” he says.

“Same difference. Is this your house, Haru?” Rin asks.

Haruka gets up and leaves the room without answering.

 

 

After he’s washed his face and brushed his teeth, though, Rin has not disappeared, nor has he somehow returned to being the right age. “That was really rude,” Rin tells him, frowning. “You didn’t even answer my question, either!”

“You broke into my house,” Haruka replies.

“I did not! I woke up here,” Rin insists, and from the indignant way he says it, Haruka is inclined to believe he isn’t lying.

He shrugs and begins cooking breakfast for two. As he grills fish, Rin peppers him with questions and Haruka ignores them, only quieting down when Haruka slides a plate of mackerel in front of him. “I don’t know,” Haruka tells him, a blanket answer for all of the things Rin had asked him, even the ones that ‘I don’t know’ isn’t a proper reply to. “You can eat that.”

Rin gives him a curious look. “You got taller, but you didn’t really change much besides that, did you?”

When Haruka doesn’t reply, though, he sighs sharply and doesn't say anything more. The only sound that fills the room is that of chopsticks clinking against their plates.

 

 

Gou had mentioned on Thursday that she and her mom were taking a weekend trip to visit some cousins in the city, so Haruka decides against calling her. Instead -- like he always does when he doesn’t know what else to do -- he decides to go to Makoto for help. “Stay here,” he says to Rin, but Rin follows him out the door anyway.

“You’re Haru, not my _mom_ ,” Rin complains. Haruka ignores him, but doesn’t stop Rin from tailing along. Somehow, though, he manages to make Rin wait a distance away when they get close enough to Makoto’s house.

“There’s something wrong. Rin is small,” Haruka says when Makoto opens the door, not bothering with a greeting.

“Small?” Makoto echoes.

Haruka steps to the side so Makoto can see what he’s talking about -- Rin by the roadside, sitting on the curb and gazing up at the sky. “Small,” Haruka repeats.

“I don’t suppose you know how that happened,” Makoto says, after a pause.

He shrugs. “Can you take care of him for the day?” Haruka asks. _You’re better with children than I am_ , he’d have added, if he were the type to make excuses.

Makoto smiles, but shakes his head. “Sorry, I’m busy. Ran and Ren have a school event and my parents can’t go, so I’m taking them.”

Haruka presses his lips together and nods once. Makoto laughs the way he always does when he senses the atmosphere getting awkward, and reaches out to pat him on the shoulder. “You two got along so well when we were kids, I’m sure he’d rather spend time with you anyway,” Makoto says.

In reply, Haruka looks away and shrugs Makoto’s hand off. Makoto’s smile falters. “Sorry. I said the wrong thing, didn’t I?” Makoto asks cautiously.

“I can watch him. It’s fine,” Haruka says, avoiding the question.

“You’ll be alright,” Makoto assures him. “Text me if you have any problems, though.”

“It’s fine,” Haruka repeats.

When he walks back, Rin is there, an expectant expression on his face. “Finally, about time,” Rin says. “I was waiting for you.”

_You didn’t have to_ , Haruka tries to say. The words won’t come out.

 

 

For a while, they wander around Iwatobi. Rin talks idly about things that Haruka already knows about, and he manages to piece together about when this Rin came from: sometime before their last relay together, he thinks, judging from the anxious way he talks about it. “Is this what you usually do on the weekends?” Rin asks, breaking his concentration. Haruka looks down at him and Rin raises an eyebrow. “Just kind of… walk? Don’t you have swim practice or something?”

He usually sits in the bathtub, but he gets the distinct feeling that Rin will laugh at him if he says that. Instead, he shrugs and replies, “I swim for the school team. School isn’t in on the weekends.”

Rin groans and grabs his hand, tugging him in the opposite direction. “Then let’s at least go to the beach,” he says steadily, the kind of tone that leaves no room for objections.

The closest beach there is can’t really be called a beach so much as it is a bunch of rocks by the shore. “Mom always says not to come here because I might slip and fall,” Rin says as he hops on top of one of the smaller stones. Haruka gets the distinct impression that he shouldn’t be letting this happen, but Rin looks so pleased with himself when he manages to skip from one rock to another in a single bound that he decides not to say anything.

He follows afterwards as Rin gets closer and closer to the waterfront. Once Rin’s found somewhere he likes -- a particularly flat stone that drops almost vertically -- he sits down, letting his legs dangle over the edge, turning to face the ocean. After a few moments pass, though, he turns back and frowns, gesturing for Haruka to come over and sit next to him. “Come on, don’t just stand there,” he says.

Haruka draws his knees up and sits a careful distance away, watching as the ocean breeze rustles at Rin’s hair. “Hmm. It’s more boring than I thought it’d be,” Rin comments, although he doesn’t sound terribly disappointed.

“Then leave,” Haruka replies.

Rin laughs and scoots closer to him. “I don’t know where else to go.” There’s a pause, and then he says, “Actually, I’m wearing my swimsuit under my clothes. We could swim.”

Haruka stares out at the horizon. The sound of the waves crashing against the shoreline is heavy. “Not in the ocean,” he replies.

“Well, duh. You can’t swim here, that’s for sure -- I meant in a pool,” Rin says.

“The swim club closed down already,” Haruka tells him.

Rin turns to look at him, jaw slightly askew and teeth exposed. “No way, seriously? I don’t believe it. _Our_ swim club?”

Haruka nods, and Rin sighs deeply. “Guess that’s out, then,” he mutters.

There’s a long pause. Finally, though, Haruka says, “There’s a pool at my school. We can swim there. Probably.”

Rin gets up abruptly. “Let’s go,” he says, grabbing Haruka’s hand to help pull him up -- his fingers are warm.

 

 

They circle back to Haruka’s house first, to get towels and pack lunch. They eat their prepackaged sandwiches and sip on juice boxes as they walk. “If we started running, it’d be exactly like when we go to the swim club together,” Rin comments as he dusts bread crumbs off of his hands.

“When we went,” Haruka corrects.

Rin tilts his head and gives him in a sideways glance. “I bet you stopped running, didn’t you?” he asks, sounding vaguely exasperated. “Your endurance must suck. Well, I guess it’s alright if you’re still doing the 50 meter and 100 meter, but…”

“It doesn’t matter,” Haruka cuts in. “I swim whatever event our club manager thinks I should swim.”

“You seriously didn’t change a single bit,” Rin says, half-amused, half-frustrated.

There’s nothing left in his juice box, but Haruka pretends to sip on it so he doesn’t have to say anything else.

 

 

Iwatobi High School’s pool was disused for so long that the lock on the fence around it had rusted and gone bad. With their budget being nearly nonexistent, they’d opted to just let it be. “Nobody will know if we don’t tell anybody,” Nagisa had said cheerfully, so that was that.

Haruka had never taken advantage of it to break in before, but only because Makoto had made him promise not to. He convinces himself that it’s not really going back on his word if _Rin_ is the one doing the breaking in and he just _happens_ to be therer. “Wow, that’s decrepit,” Rin says as he pushes the fence door open.

“The pool is fine, though,” Haruka says, only pausing to drop his bag before pulling his shirt off.

For once, though, he’s not the first one in the water: right as he’s about to jump in, Rin neatly ducks under his arm and does a neat pencil dive straight to the bottom of the pool. Haruka stops to watch as he plunges downwards, feet hitting the ground before he pushes himself straight back to the top. “What’re you waiting for?” Rin asks after he surfaces, treading water as he looks up at Haruka curiously.

“You aren’t going to ask me to race?” Haruka asks. For once, he has to _try_ to make himself sound disinterested.

Rin scowls and frowns. “That wouldn’t be fair, you’re taller than me now. And more muscular. You’ll beat me way too easily,” he says.

Haruka stares somewhere over Rin’s head, expression impassive. “I don’t want to compete,” he replies. “I just want to swim.”

He watches as Rin considers his answer -- he’d never thought about it when he was younger, but Rin's face was so expressive that he had always made it so obvious what he was thinking. “Okay. As long as it’s just swimming,” he finally agrees.

Haruka isn’t sure why, but his chest feels tight and warm as he dives in.

 

 

“Are we still doing the relay together?” Rin asks. He’s long since retired to sitting at the side of the pool, toes dipping into the water, but Haruka’s still floating on his back, drifting along. He isn’t sure how much time has passed exactly, but the sun is starting to turn red.

“You went to Australia,” he answers. “We couldn’t.”

“Well, yeah, I know that! I meant afterwards, when I come back, of course,” Rin says. Haruka doesn’t have to look up to know that Rin must be rolling his eyes.

Haruka stares up at the sky, squinting his eyes against the light. “I don’t want to swim the relay without Rin in it,” he replies. He closes his eyes and sinks underneath the water: he doesn’t want to hear a response to that.

 

 

There are occasionally moments when Haruka contemplates deeply the idea of drowning while he’s underwater -- not in any form of ideation, but a concept fully separate from himself and his memories. Sometimes, it doesn’t seem so bad. At others, it seems like the most painful way to go. Today, he knows Rin is waiting for him and decides that drowning would be excruciating.

He resurfaces, inhaling deeply and blinking a few times before wading over to the edge, pulling himself out of the pool. “Were you thinking heavy thoughts?” Rin asks, tossing a towel at him. “My dad once told me that if you think heavy thoughts, you’ll sink.”

Haruka wipes his face and drapes the towel around his shoulders. “Not as heavy as they could’ve been,” he answers.

 

 

The sun is already mostly set by the time they’ve walked back to Haruka’s house, and the light that filters through the windows are gentle oranges, pinks, violets. Haruka cooks dinner while Rin rinses the chlorine out of his hair. _It’s not worth it_ , Haruka wants to say. _Sooner or later, the smell won’t quite wash out no matter how hard you try._

Rin wrinkles his nose when he comes out of the bathroom to find the exact same thing they’d eaten for breakfast on the table again, this time with grilled vegetables on the side. “Haru, you have to eat carbohydrates too,” he says. “Humans can’t live like this. And especially not swimmers.”

“If you don’t like it, I’ll eat your half,” Haruka replies.

He almost smiles when Rin hastily picks up a piece of fish with his chopsticks and shoves it into his mouth. “I was saying it for you, not for me,” he grumbles as he chews. “Hey, Haru. If you’re gonna look like this in five years, what about me?”

“You look,” Haruka says, but he pauses in the middle of the sentence. He closes his eyes and thinks about seventeen-year-old Rin: still a little taller than he is, still a little more built than he is too. Rin stares up at him, eyes wide, and Haruka can tell how excited he is for the answer. He sighs before he finishes his thought: “Like how somebody who went to swimming school in Australia should look.”

Rin nods a few times happily. “Good, that’s good,” he says. He meets eyes with Haruka and smiles, but Haruka turns his gaze away.

 

 

Sometime between when they clean up their dishes and when they lie down in Haruka’s bedroom to wait for sleep to come, Haruka is struck by the sudden realization that if this really is somehow the Rin from five years ago, then he can change things. He can warn Rin, and then their race would have never happened, and then Rin would have never cried, and he wouldn’t have come back four years later the way that he did.

He sits up in his bed and stares down at where Rin’s resting, on a spare futon. Rin’s already asleep, but it’d be so easy to pull him back into the waking world, even if it were just for a few moments. All he’d have to do is shake Rin’s shoulder a few times, and that would probably be enough.

Haruka’s already kneeling on the floor, hand reaching towards Rin -- but he stops halfway.

There must be a reason that this has happened. Haruka can’t make himself believe that it was to change the past.

 

 

When he wakes up in the morning, he is the only one there, and Haruka isn’t particularly surprised by that. He rolls up the empty futon, and goes on with his usual morning routine, only getting dressed for school when Makoto comes to collect him. “Rin’s not here,” Makoto comments, doing a terrible job at trying to make his tone sound light and conversational.

Haruka shrugs and closes the door behind him. “I think he went back,” he replies.

“Don’t you think we should check on him? Maybe we can get in contact with his school somehow, to ask if he was in yesterday…” Makoto says slowly.

“Not necessary,” Haruka interrupts. “Everything is as it should be. That’s all.”

Makoto seems startled for a moment, but then he smiles. “Alright,” he replies, following behind as Haruka keeps walking. “It… wasn’t any trouble, was it?”

He shrugs. “It wasn’t that troublesome.”

“Alright,” Makoto replies.

_I remembered that I wanted to swim the relay with him again_ , he almost wants to reply. Instead, he turns his head to look out at the ocean as it comes into view. “Next time,” he says aloud.

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows:
> 
> énouement: n. the bittersweetness of having arrived here in the future, where you can finally get the answers to how things turn out in the real world—who your baby sister would become, what your friends would end up doing, where your choices would lead you, exactly when you’d lose the people you took for granted—which is priceless intel that you instinctively want to share with anybody who hadn’t already made the journey, as if there was some part of you who had volunteered to stay behind, who was still stationed at a forgotten outpost somewhere in the past, still eagerly awaiting news from the front.


End file.
